RE: Fair use (RE: electronic journals CCC)

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

> This is exactly my point!!  No matter how many frightening scenarios you
> conjur up, they will occur or not occur regardless of what a contract
> says.

Not true.  If the contract says "no electronic ILL" and the librarian
abides by it (as we all seem to agree that he or she will), then the
"frightening scenario" of an article floating around uncontrolled in
cyberspace is far less likely to occur.  As Tom just pointed out again, it
doesn't prevent someone from scanning and e-mailing the article, but as
I'll point out again, that approach involves so much more work than simply
hitting the "forward" button that it represents a much less likely
scenario.  We're talking about relative likelihood here; the likelihood
that an article attached to an e-mail message will replicate itself by a
factor of 100 is far greater than the likelihood that a paper copy will
replicate itself by a factor of 5.

> We also agree that the contract should provide "recourse in the event
> of a breach by the other."  Therefore (yet again), Publishers should
> be able to word their contracts to allow electronic ILL while at the
> same time explicitly forbidding the distribution to thousands with a
> single mouse click that you imagine (and thus recourse if that were to
> happen).

But (yet again) the problem is that once you e-mail an article to an end
user, you're outside the parameters of the contract.  The publisher signs
a contract with the library, not with the end-user of an ILL transaction
at some other institution.  Unless that user is a party to the contract,
the publisher has no contractual recourse if the user forwards the article
to the 1,000 recipients of OILNET-L or whatever.

-------------
Rick Anderson
Electronic Resources/Serials Coordinator
The University Libraries
University of Nevada, Reno
1664 No. Virginia St.
Reno, NV  89557
PH  (775) 784-6500 x273
FX  (775) 784-1328
rickand@unr.edu